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M. Lohaus & S. Stapel
"Who commits to regional human rights treaties? Reputational benefits, sovereignty costs, and regional dynamics"
Journal of Human Rights
Last update: June 22, 2022


--------------------------------- Contents and instructions -----------------------------------------------------------
1 - ReadMe.txt
This file :-)

2 - online appendix.pdf:
Supplementary information accompanying the article. This PDF contains:
- a codebook describing data main variables and their source 
- the results of all additional analyses and robustness checks

3 - analysis 2022-06-22.do:
Stata Do-File to run the event history analysis and create output figures and tables.

4 - figures 2022-06-22.R:
R Script to create the other three figures from the article: 
- Figure 1 (cumulative ratifications)
- Figure 2 (map with average ratif. speed)
- Figure 4 (ratifications during episodes of democratization)

ratif_dyad.csv:
Main data set containing annual observations for treaty-country dyads.

ratifcounts.csv:
Simplified data set containig annual observations of new and cumulative ratifications for each treaty.


--------------------------------- List of variables in ratif_dyad.csv  ------------------------------------------------
(One line in the file represents one treaty-country-year observation.)

"country" = country name
"ccodealp" = 3-letter Country Code from Quality of Government
"ccodecow" = Country code according to Correlates of War (via Quality of Government)
"ccodewb" = Country code according to the World Bank (via Quality of Government)

"year" = Year of the current observation
"rio" = Regional international organization (either OAS or OAU/AU)
"wdi_reg" = Sub-region according to the World Development Indicators 
"joinyear" = Year the country has joined the RIO

"treaty" = Treaty (named as rio_year)
"treatyyear" = Year the treaty was opened for ratfication
"id2" = ID variable in the format rio_treaty
"id3"  = ID variable in the format rio_treaty_year

"ratif" = dependent variable: has the treaty been ratified by this country in this year? 

"fh_ipolity2" - Imputed Freedom House and Polity democracy score (see online appendix)
"democratization3" - Coded as 1 when fh_ipolity2 increased by 2.0 or more in current or two previous years
"regratifs" - Number of countries from the same sub-region that had ratified the respective treaty prior to this year
"highcost_court" - Coded as 1 when a regional treaty imposes high sovereignty costs by empowering a regional court
"gdp" - GDP in constant 2010 U.S. dollars, converted from domestic currencies using 2010 official exchange rates
"commonlaw" - Coded as 1 for countries with a British / Common Law legal heritage, such as former British colonies
"newlead2" - Coded as 1 for every year in which a new “leader-spell” according to Archigos has started 
"un_meeting" - Coded as 1 when a UN conference on the topic of the treaty took place in current or two previous years

"ucdp_type3" - Number of internal armed conflicts per country in a given year (UCDP/PRIO)
"vdem_polyarchy" - Alternative democracy specification (V-Dem)
"newdem3" - Coded as 1 when V-Dem increased by at least 0.1 on the original scale in current or two previous years


--------------------------------- List of variables in ratifcounts.csv ------------------------------------------------
(One line in the file represents one treaty-year observation.)

"treaty" - Treaty name as above
"year" - Year as above
"treatylabel" - Label to be used in figures

"ratifs_cum" - Cumulative ratifications by the end of current year
"audummy" - Coded as 1 if treaty belongs to OAU/AU; 0 if OAS
"costdummy" - Coded as 1 if the treaty imposes high costs (see "highcost_court")
"ratifs_new" - New ratifications in current year
